Term 2 Trump foreign policy - from tariffs to NATO to soft power to China and Russia - is an epic mess. One reason seems to be that the administration is operating with two conflicting, equally flawed, views of the world and the US's place in it. 🧵
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Trump administration policy is partly grounded in a worldview in which the US is one of several great powers, each with its own sphere of influence, but also in a view of the US as the unconstrained unipole.
The 19th century great powers model assumes that only great powers matter and only they have either agency or sovereignty. The rest of the world is there to be carved up between them.
This attitude is reflected in, for example, suggestions that the US is happy to leave Europe to Russia, while the US carves out its own sphere of influence in the Americas.
The great power model assumes a world organised via pragmatic bargaining grounded in realpolitik, and where the mutual capacity to inflict damage constrains expansionist impulses.
At the same time, though, and despite Rubio's (correct) observation that unipolarity was an anomaly of the post-Cold War period, the Trump administration seems to be replaying George W. Bush's approach to world affairs, in which the US is the unconstrained global hegemon.
Probably right but what’s infuriating is their false and offensive and pro fascism thought that Russia is somehow greater and more important than all the rest of Europe.
Thank you for this thread and the article. A lot of this has been crudely floating around in my amateur mind for the last few months and your expertise has been very helpful to clarify and add much to the subject.
Trump is not a nationalist in the normal sense of the word. he doesn't see America as his fatherland (patria), he sees it as his property (along he lines of Louis XIV). He acts out of resentment and hurt pride that "his" America doesn't get the deference that he thinks it (i. e. he) is due.
yeah and I think another built-in problem with the administration is that all the cabinet positions are loyalists. Normally, you'd have State, Commerce, Defense, etc weighing in with carve-outs from the tariffs because of critical needs and geopolitical interests. Not any more
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When I think of the incredible talent they have at their disposal, these failures are too bad.
how do you have a bio like this and not know who viktor yanukovych is?